


Engender Perfect Newness

by darthjamtart



Category: Earth: Final Conflict
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/pseuds/darthjamtart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn’t the kind of art Boone grew up with, that’s for sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Engender Perfect Newness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miranda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miranda/gifts).



> Title taken from Chapter E of Christian Bök’s Eunoia. This is set very early in season one.

“I’d understand, if you wanted out,” Lili says. Politely, she doesn't point out that it would be impossible. She’s got one elbow resting on the table between them, one hand stretched out, fingertips falling centimeters short of his wrist. Boone blinks, his head tilted forward. He will remember this: the slick gleam of a sticky patch on the dark wood, the residue of someone’s spilled drink; the half dozen conversations happening around them, flares of laughter and murmurs he shouldn’t be able to understand. He could count the goosebumps on her forearm in his sleep.

The CVI is mostly controllable. He almost never dreams of Kate’s face, every stop-motion second of the explosion and the crash. He had to force himself, at first, not to wander through each freeze-frame, to just close his eyes and think of nothing.

Taelon embassies sponsor meditation classes. By necessity, apparently. Boone can imagine what it would have been like for the first implanted agents, and he’s grateful, sometimes, that at least he had some precedence to go by. Sandoval’s guidance, along with Sandoval’s...interference.

Boone is grateful, and he hates himself a little, for that.

“I don’t want out,” he tells her, which is technically true. He wants the CVI out of his head, wants to be rid of any lingering sense of gratitude toward the people he wants to hate. He wants Kate back, wants more than the too-real remembrances the CVI can give him.

He can’t get what he wants. How does the song go? It’s an idle thought, but it summons Mick Jagger’s voice, every raucous chord of the Rolling Stones playing in his head. He listens to it until Lili closes the last few centimeters to shake his wrist, saying, “Snap out of it, Boone.”

His global chimes, and Boone slides his arm from under her grip. “That’s Da’an,” he says, and Lili nods.

“I’ll tell Doors,” she says, and Boone turns away. He wants to be able to trust her. He wants to be able to trust anyone.

***

Da’an is waiting for him at the embassy, alien visage inscrutable as ever, even more so with the façade of human skin. At least the visible flux of energy gives away some measure of Taelon emotion, but they rarely show even that much of themselves to the human world. “It’s unsettling to the human eye,” Sandoval had suggested. _Too honest,_ Boone thinks, and schools his own expression, wishes he’d played more poker. He can’t afford to have too many tells, these days.

“Commander Boone,” Da’an greets him. “I thought you might accompany me to a gallery opening.”

“Certainly,” Boone says. “Did you want me to look over the security arrangements?”

Da’an wafts a hand across a data stream, pulling up the gallery’s address. “Agent Sandoval has already done so,” Da’an says, and there’s the information, scrolling briefly across the data stream and instantly recorded by the CVI.

The gallery isn’t open to the public yet, but the featured artist was the recipient of a joint Taelon-NEA grant. It should make Boone feel more relaxed, at least: an empty building is easier to secure than one open to the public. He follows, watching Da’an pause consideringly in front of small paintings, mixed-media collages and simple line drawings. They don’t look like anything special to Boone, but what does he know? He’ll be able to describe them to Augur in perfect detail later, if asked, but the CVI can’t tell him if the art is any good.

The third and final room is empty except for a statue on a pedestal in the middle of the room. A somewhat abstract rendering of two figures, intertwined in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of Klimt’s _The Kiss_ , but in three-dimensions, made of shimmering blue and gold organic matter. There’s a small orb on the front of the sculpture’s stand, with a small plaque reading, _Place your hand on the globe to interact with the statue._

Da’an drifts to a stop, just out of reach, and looks at Boone. Boone looks back, waiting.

“The artist is a biochemist,” Da’an informs him. “She created the sculpture with a modified version of the bio-matter we use to grow buildings. Human ingenuity,” Da’an adds, clearly pleased.

“The art is alive?” Boone asks. Da’an doesn’t answer, but gestures for Boone to approach the statue. The orb on the front of the stand shimmers with the same colors as the sculpture, although Boone can’t actually see how the two are connected. The pedestal itself looks the same as any other in the museums Boone has visited, pale laminate or stone. Despite his misgivings, Boone steps forward and places his palm squarely on the globe.

There’s an immediate ripple of movement from the statue. The clinging figures separate, arms stretched unnaturally long for a moment before the lower one turns, bio-matter shifting to face Boone as bright spots of red blossom inside its torso. The taller figure freezes, arms still reaching for its companion, and the shorter figure reaches out, fingers shaping to cross the edge of the pedestal, stretching down to come within a centimeter of Boone’s face.

Boone takes an abrupt step back, breaking contact with the globe, and the movement stops. After a moment, the figures return to their original position.

“What was that?” Boone asks, barely able to hear his own voice for the rushing in his ears. He takes a deep breath. “Does it move that way for everyone?”

“No,” Da’an says. “It responds to the physiology of the viewer.”

“It’s not reading my mind?” Boone asks. He hasn’t been able to look away from the sculpture yet, even though the red has disappeared from the bio-matter, leaving only the original blue and gold.

“It might seem like that,” Da’an says, which isn’t a yes or no, exactly. Boone makes himself turn to look at the Companion.

“Did you want to try it?” he asks.

Da’an studies him from behind the façade of not-quite-human skin. Wordlessly, Da’an steps forward and places a hand on the globe.

The figures move more slowly this time, separating and stepping back slightly, their colors changing. The taller figure shimmers bluer and bluer, gold turning to pink, more transparent than before. The shorter figure becomes correspondingly opaque, a radiant array of colors dripping with red. They each raise a palm and press their hands together, and the taller figure is abruptly shot through with gold again, the shorter figure swaying and staggering, the red coalescing in tiny explosions, over and over.

It’s beautiful. Boone has no idea what it means, but he’ll remember it, every color, every movement. He watches until Da’an steps back, until the figures return to their original embrace. Da’an is flushed, blue patches turning the façade translucent in places. Head dropping, Da’an drops the façade entirely for a moment, standing before Boone with only the jumpsuit to conceal the ripple of energy, the brightness of alien delight. When the façade returns, Da’an is smiling gently.

“The experience can be shared,” Da’an murmurs. One hand hovers over the globe, the other extends toward Boone, palm-up, in invitation. The bio-matter statue waits, frozen in intimacy.

Boone can’t say he isn’t intrigued. How would the figures respond to the two of them? What could he learn?

And what would he give away?

“Maybe next time,” Boone says. If Da’an is disappointed, there’s no way for Boone to tell. The small smile lingers on Da’an’s face as they leave the gallery.

***

“You should have done it,” Lili tells him, later that night. Boone scowls down at his beer, which he’d ordered out of habit before remembering that it won’t have any effect on him.

“I’m not sure I should have touched the damn thing in the first place,” Boone replies. “For all I know, the Taelons are using it as some sort of thought-recording device.”

Lili looks momentarily alarmed, then shrugs. “If that’s a possibility, we have bigger problems.” She takes a long drink of her beer, sagging against the back of her seat. “Still,” she says. “It’s an opportunity. Don’t you want to know what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling?”

The CVI intrusion is brief, but it leaves Boone blinking away images of the statue responding to Da’an’s touch: the flashes of gold as the taller figure grew until it seemed to tower over the smaller figure; the bursts of red in the smaller figure; the way their palms pressed together until they seemed fused.

“I want the world to be the way it was,” Boone says. “Ugly and violent and human." His skrill is warm on his wrist, and Boone pauses. The alien weapon is easier to use than any of the human technology he used to carry, lower maintenance and generally less fatal. Closing his eyes, he lets himself picture Kate, surrounding himself with the CVI-enhanced memory of her hair on the pillow, her arm stretching across the bed. Morning breath and coffee breath and chapped lips in the winter.

Lili is watching him with pity in her eyes when he looks up. "Do you think the Taelons grieve the way we do?" she asks. It's the kind of human understanding that doesn't require mind-reading alien technology to know what he's thinking, and Boone knows he still has to work on that poker face.

"Maybe someday you'll get a chance to find out," Boone says.


End file.
